Welcome to my personal blog and online portfolio… thank you for calling!

A picture speaks a thousand words and I hope you enjoy many of the thousand and more photographs I’ve taken and shared online on topics close to my heart like sculpture, monuments and public art, architecture and nature. I release most photographs under an open Creative Commons-type licence, and upload many to portals like Wikimedia Commons.

Are you interested in meditation and mindfulness? Are you looking for a mindfulness teacher? I’m a trained mindfulness in schools practioner, available for hire in South Wales, UK and nearabouts. I curate a number of mindfulness resources, including the Mindfulness in Wales Network on the Hwb learning platform. Mindfulness in Wales Network now has over 250 members.

I have been teaching for a decade including experience in further and higher education, primary and secondary school education. If you want to hire me as a mindfulness teacher, teacher or similar role, please feel free to get in touch for a chat. I teach KS2 upwards.

I am passionate about mental health and well-being in schools for all, and this is the topic of my current masters level research.

I am a technology enthusiast. You could call me a retired geek. My first published newspaper article on computing dates back to 1984. In my first teaching job in the middle of the 1990s I taught computing in further education, teaching on college campus and in the community at various locations in the South Wales Valleys. I set up and organised the original LUG (Linux User Group) in South Wales and invited the legendary Alan Cox (way back in the mists of time) to come to a meeting to network!

A translation! 🙂 I’m a Welshspeaker and proud I can both speak Welsh and am qualified to teach as a language. Teaching Welsh is a big privilege and responsibility for me. In my thirties, I trained as a Welsh teacher and I did my degree research through the medium of Welsh on using interactive technology to teach in the Welsh language classroom.

I’ve experimented with journalling and creative writing over a number of years, including nature journalling. There’s a sample of a daily written mindfulness practice here focusing on the joys of noticing nature.

I love animals, the countryside and peace and quiet and I hope this comes through in my writing and photography here.

Wishing you much joy today. Darren

PS. Can’t find what you’re looking for? Try this Advanced Search form, or there a Tag Map here with tags listed in a 3 column, alphabet format, and a Tag Cloud here.

Would you believe it? There are many ‘Darren Rees’ and ‘Darran Rees’ people out there online. So I’ve tried to brand myself with my middle initial ‘Darren W. Rees’.

It would be really helpful to see further clarification on your press release @neucymru claim concerning supply teachers in Wales and the 8 local authorities you say do not offer guidance on employ supply teachers. Who are they please? Thanks.